Not a Grain of Sand
by Rphoenix
Summary: Everything changes after the Sand Siblings' first mission to Konoha.


Everything was different in Konoha.

Temari was used to the temperature dropping from furnace heat to frostbite cold within twenty minutes of nightfall, but in Konoha warm days imperceptibly faded into cool nights. Sunlight was gentle gold instead of blinding white, and the edges of shadows looked velvety instead of sharp enough to slice; water tasted like moss instead of stone; Leaf cooks used vinegar when Sand cooks would have reached for salt; and everywhere, everywhere was greenery thrusting roots into the yielding earth, and not a grain of sand that they hadn't brought with them.

Everything had changed since Konoha.

None of them had ever failed at a mission. Gaara had never even lost a fight before. But here they were, beating their retreat back through this deceptive land, which, like its shinobi, seemed soft but was hard underneath.

Just the sight of Karasu was enough to disconcert most shinobi, but quiet Shino's swarming insects even gave the creeps to the puppet-master Kankurou. Shikamaru had struck Temari as a sullen boy with little chakra and less willpower, but he beat her with strategy, and then surprised her again by admitting that he hadn't the strength to hold her, when he could have claimed victory and released her before anyone noticed it wasn't by choice. Naruto had grinned and bounced like a puppy, then fought Gaara— and Shukaku— to a stand-still.

The Sand ninja were different: hard on the outside, soft under the shell. Kankurou looked so fierce in his catsuit and face paint that it even startled Temari when he appeared with his face bare and cheerful, and his hair all fluffy. And the Uchiha brat had proved that beneath the shield of sand, Gaara's body, at least, was vulnerable.

When Temari had bandaged Gaara's shoulder, she had tried to keep her fingers off his skin as carefully as she tried to keep her hands from shaking— though there was no reason to think that whether she touched him through cloth or skin to skin would affect whether Shukaku would emerge entire, or whether Gaara might kill her in his madness. Still, she'd sent Kankurou off for a quick reconnaissance before she started. Just in case. But Gaara ignored her completely, lost in some inner struggle. His skin was so smooth when her hands brushed against it that she worried that the calluses on her palms would tear it.

Temari knew exactly where the breaches in her own shield were, and how unprotected she was underneath. Kankurou was her best companion, the brother she could laugh with and fight beside and trust with her secrets and her life. They knew each other's minds so well that they could communicate without a word spoken.

She didn't know Gaara's mind, which was probably just as well; and she knew he didn't know hers. Gaara saw other people as objects that were sometimes annoying and sometimes useful, and as potential deaths to add to his tally. She could just barely remember a sweet and fragile little boy. But that child had been dead for years. In his place stood a blank-faced killer, a shell of sand filled with bloodlust and a demon, and probably nothing else.

And yet losing either of them would destroy her. That was her soft spot. She hoped no enemy would ever figure it out.

Konoha had changed them.

Kankurou was subdued as they traveled. She was sure of his feelings where they echoed hers: dismayed at their failure, shaken by the emergence of Shukaku, worried about how strange Gaara had seemed after his battle with Naruto, and that either he was going crazier than usual and might kill them at any moment, or that he was more badly injured than they realized and might collapse at any moment. But she thought he had something else on his mind as well.

"About Shikamaru…" Kankurou had begun, then trailed off.

"I know: he could have won," she'd said. "I'd call it a draw, myself. It's all right. I'll get stronger."

"You're already stronger than him," he replied.

She realized that the question she answered hadn't been the one her brother had asked. But he was evasive she pressed him, and finally subsided into a most un-Kankurou-like moody silence.

Temari was on point now as they made their way through the forest. Gaara's light footsteps paced out an even rhythm, with Kankurou's heavier ones an uneven counterpoint. Kankurou had carried Gaara until he was able to walk, and he was carrying Karasu now. Every now and then, she heard a foot come down hard as he staggered.

They had set a brutal pace for the last two days, and their stops had been limited to a few minutes to catch their breath and rest their feet. Temari's body ached from the lack of sleep, and her eyelids were sore and swollen. The trees seemed to exert a gravitational pull on her: she kept stumbling into them, and if she didn't step away quick she'd start to slide down. If they didn't get some sleep soon, she and Kankurou would start to hallucinate; she remembered that from a training exercise when they'd been kept up for days. First it was flashes of light and movement in her peripheral vision, then phantom kunai flying at her face. Or perhaps they had been butterflies. She'd never been able to determine whether the darting shadows had blades or wings. Kankurou had seen hands reaching out of the sand.

The other thing was, her mind kept drifting. She tried to weigh the relative disadvantages of their current state of disrepair, against the possibility of Konoha shinobi catching up with them if they stopped, against the question of whether or not there even was any pursuit, but was unable to come to a conclusion.

"Temari." Gaara's voice was quiet behind her. "Do you want to stop here?"

She'd automatically inspected the glen as it came into view: no traps, no lurking shinobi, no signs of dangerous animals, reasonably defensible, convenient access to running water in the form of a stream, and a large patch of comfortable-looking grass free of protruding rocks or roots— the last not something Gaara would have noticed, as he didn't sleep and disliked lying down.

The scales came down of the side of the idea that they'd gone far enough now that it was unlikely that anyone from Konoha would materialize. Besides, that grass looked sweeter than fresh water after a long climb in the dunes.

She began setting the perimeter traps while Kankurou unpacked the little they had to unpack. The tripwire tautened under her fingers. She looked up. Gaara was neatly fastening the other end.

"Oh…" She was at a loss for words. "You don't have to…"

"I know how to set a tripwire," he pointed out.

"Of course you _know…"_

"So I'll help," he said simply.

Temari had no idea why he was going out of his way to be helpful for the first time since they had both counted their age in single digits, but interrogating Gaara was unlikely to improve her chances of a long and healthy life. If he (inexplicably) wanted to help, he was welcome to the other end of the wire.

They ate in silence. Kankurou was too weary to talk, and Temari had too much on her mind. Had Gaara's experience with physical pain given him some measure of human sympathy? Had something happened during his battle with Sasuke or Naruto, other than them beating each other up? What in the world had he and Naruto discussed so intensely after they finished beating each other up?

She glanced at her little brother. Temari and Kankurou were bleached and tanned to the hues of sunlight and sand, but Gaara's eyes matched the moss he sat on, and the bruised circles around them were black as the dirt beneath. Under the desert sun, blood was too bright to look at, but here it was a darker red, the color of Gaara's hair. Had he seen something of himself in Konoha? Had Konoha seen something familiar in him?

Kankurou stretched out on the grass and fell asleep almost before he had finished chewing. Gaara leaned back against a tree. "Go to sleep. I'll watch."

That, at least, was normal. So was the sand that eddied around his ankles, butting against them like a cat demanding a scratch behind the ears. So was the eerie way that his gaze sometimes followed things that weren't there— like phantom butterflies, Temari realized.

"Gaara?" she asked. "What do you see?"

"It's not real," he said.

"I know. I see things too, if I don't sleep for a few days."

"Is that why? I thought…"

He had thought it was part of his unique madness, she supposed, the same as she had.

"But what do you see?"

Crushed skulls, she expected him to say. Demon claws. Floating eyeballs.

"Sand," he said. "Only sand."

Temari stretched out on the grass and closed her eyes. On the edge of sleep, she suddenly felt that she was falling, falling upward into the sky. She clutched at the ground, but the solidity beneath her fingers had the resilience of earth, not the endless depth of sand.

Still half in dreams, she thought,

She only realized that she had spoken aloud when she heard his soft reply:

"I see you."


End file.
